Green jade earrings mounted as threader chains: a long post passes through the lobe, the chain follows and lets a round jade bead hang below the ear. The green is pale and translucent, with a small faceted red bead set just above it.
In four lines
Threader chains: the post passes the lobe, the chain follows, the bead hangs.
Two round pierced jade beads, mounted with no setting at all.
Gold tone metal, alloy not stated. Red bead not identified.
No size to choose: there is nothing to measure on an earring.
Two stones are never the same green
This is the only family in the catalogue where the stone comes in pairs, and that is what makes it interesting. On a natural material, two beads from the same block will not be strictly identical: one will be a little milkier, the other a little more translucent, and the green will shift by a quarter of a tone. That is not a sorting defect, it is a signature.
The consequence is direct: if your two beads are of a strictly identical green, that deserves a closer look rather than celebration. A perfectly reproducible colour is what a dye produces, not a rock. I claim nothing about this pair, whose treatment status is not determined like that of the whole catalogue. The checks that need no equipment.
The threader chain, and how it is worn
This mounting has neither clasp nor butterfly back. The rigid post enters at the front of the lobe, comes out behind, and you pull it until the chain takes its place; the bead ends up below the ear, the chain hangs behind. You set the length by pulling more or less, which means there is no size to choose, and none to get wrong either.
Two precautions, and they hold for every threader model: nothing locks the chain, so an earring can slide and fall if something pulls on it, a jumper for instance. And the piercing needs to be well healed, since the post is fine but rigid.
A pale green, and what it is worth
These beads are a light green, almost milky, with a little translucency at the edge. On jadeite, that green comes from a low content of chromium; on nephrite, from a low content of iron. The two minerals are unrelated, jadeite is a pyroxene and nephrite an amphibole, and it took a laboratory to separate them: Alexis Damour, in 1863. What tells them apart.
The market overvalues intense green and looks down on pale green. That is a pricing convention, not a hierarchy of material: a pale, translucent jade is no less jade than a dark, opaque one. What makes the price of a jade.
Why I write green jade earrings, and not simply jade earrings
Because the word jade, on its own, says very little. What is sold under that name is very often serpentine, labelled “new jade” or “Korean jade”, or dyed quartzite, sold as “Malaysia jade”. None of those names designates jade.
On a bare stone, the scale settles it: the four reference figures above are separated by far more than the uncertainty of a kitchen scale. On a bead strung on its chain it settles nothing, and this page writes that rather than letting you believe otherwise. I weigh, I do not certify.
Additional information
Stone
Jadéite
Colour
Light green
Stone shape
Round beads
Motif
No motif
Mounting
Chain
Metal
Gold tone, alloy not stated
Setting
Drilled stone
Worn by
Women
Paired stones
Red bead, not identified
Mineral family
Sodium aluminium pyroxene
Hardness (Mohs)
6.5 to 7
Reference density
3.25 to 3.36 g/cm³
Toughness
Exceptional, interlocking crystals
Treatment
Not determined
Origin
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to jade worn at the ear
What follows changes register, and I flag it rather than blending it into the rest of the page. Nothing here is demonstrated. These are usages and beliefs, old and documented, that I report because they are part of the history of this stone. No piece of jewellery in this shop is sold as a treatment, and I attribute no effect to this one.
The stone that movesAn earring follows the step and the breath. Several traditions have read a meaning into that constant movement; I mention it because it comes up often, without giving it more weight than that.
The ear, a late usageJade was first an object of ritual, of rank and of power, rarely an earring. The jade ear piece is a recent form, carried by modern trade rather than by tradition.
A stone of moral virtueIn Confucian thought, jade is associated with qualities of character rather than with effects on the body: uprightness, constancy, restraint. It is the best documented meaning of all.
Imperial greenThe market calls imperial green a clear, translucent green, and the phrase circulates with no fixed definition: it is neither a standard, nor an official grading, nor a guarantee of anything. I use it on none of my pages.
Dispatch within 48 hours of your order being confirmed, for delivery within 14 days from dispatch. I keep no stock in reserve, and I will not promise a date I could not meet.
Shipping Costs
€6.99 whatever the destination, free on orders over €47 to France, Belgium, Switzerland and Luxembourg. The exact amount is shown in your basket before you pay.
The Packaging, and Why It Matters
Every piece travels in its own pouch, kept apart from the others. This is not a question of presentation: the hardness of jade is unremarkable, between 6 and 6.5 for nephrite and 6.5 to 7 for jadeite, and the quartz in ordinary household dust sits at 7. Two pieces of jewellery that travel together arrive marked.
Fourteen Days to Change Your Mind
No need to give a reason. An email is enough to open a return; there is no form to fill in. Return postage is at your expense, unless the piece does not match its listing or arrives damaged.
Lukewarm water, mild soap, a soft cloth. A very soft brush for the hollows of a carving. That is all, and it is enough.
What You Must Never Do, and Why
No ultrasonic cleaners, no steam, no solvents, no heat source. This is not a precaution for show: the treatment status of my pieces is undetermined. My supplier does not know it, and weighing identifies the mineral without telling me anything about a possible resin impregnation. Resin withstands neither heat nor solvents, so every piece is handled as though it might contain some. The information sheet on treatments.
Scratches, and Where They Come From
Jade is tough, meaning very difficult to break: its structure of interlocking crystals resists cracking, and that is what made it usable for axe heads in the Neolithic. Its hardness, by contrast, is unremarkable, 6 to 6.5 for nephrite and 6.5 to 7 for jadeite. The quartz in ordinary household dust sits at 7: that is what dulls a jade, not knocks. The difference between the two.
Day to Day
Put the piece on after perfume and cream, never before. Take it off for housework, gardening and sport, where knocks against hard edges are common. Store each piece on its own, in its pouch. On a strand of beads, the thread wears out before the stone: it gets restrung, and there is nothing abnormal about that.
My name is Jade. French, from Morbihan, living in Tallinn. I choose the pieces and have them mounted: I mine nothing, I cut nothing, and the metalwork is not done by my hand. What I bring is the selection, and with this material that is what decides everything.
I am not a gemmologist, not a lapidary, not a therapist, and I do not claim to be.
I Weigh, I Do Not Certify
Before a listing goes online, I order one example of it for myself. When it reaches me unmounted, I weigh it in air, then suspended from a thread in a glass of water: the ratio of the two masses gives the density, and that figure separates jadeite, nephrite, serpentine and dyed quartzite without ambiguity.
One example per listing, and not every piece. I do not handle the piece that is sent to you, and I would rather write that down than let you believe otherwise. The method, with its three limits.
What I Cannot Know
The treatment status of my pieces. My supplier does not know it, and the scales do not tell me: they identify the mineral, not the resin impregnation. Only infrared spectroscopy in a laboratory would settle it, and I do not have that done. So you will never read “Grade A jadeite”, “Type A” or “untreated” on this site. The information sheet.
Where My Jade Comes From
No Burmese jadeite, and the first reason is legal. Not the one you read everywhere: the JADE Act of 2008 did ban these stones in the United States, but that ban was lifted on 7 October 2016. What applies today dates from 8 April 2021: the US Treasury sanctioned Myanma Gems Enterprise, the state company that controls the Burmese gem trade. So there is no blanket ban, but a US person is not allowed to trade with that entity, and a stone never tells you where it has been. A single supply chain serves ten markets, so it has to hold up in the most demanding of them. When an origin is not confirmed to me in writing, the listing does not state it. My origin charter.
